Some kinds of sharing illegal

December 19, 2007|PAT AMES

Regarding the letter from Kevin McCullough (Voice, Nov. 30): I don't know McCollough but the information he provides is not correct and the advice he offers, if followed, could lead to serious problems for those who take it. The Recording Industry Association of America, the Motion Picture Association of America and the television networks have ways to track/trace the illegal exchange and sharing of movies, music and television shows. The Indiana University South Bend campus regularly receives notices about illegal sharing with specific information about the file, the date/time of the illegal activity, the file-sharing program used and the location from which the exchange took place. They don't care about artist-authorized free music downloads. What they do care about are the thousands of tunes ripped from CDs, the camera-captured in-theater movies, the uploaded copies of new release DVDs and the current episodes of popular TV shows that aren't authorized for free sharing. If you go to a network's Web site and watch last night's episode of "Survivor," no problem. That's OK. If you find a new MP3 on the musician's own Web site, he or she probably put it there for you to enjoy at no cost. If you go to MovieFlix, buy a membership and watch The Devil Bat on your computer, you're fine. All of these are legal. However, if you're using Kazaa, Morpheus, BitTorrent, Limewire or any of a number of other peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing applications to exchange tunes and movies with your friends, odds are you're sharing them illegally. Sure, you may get away with it for a while but if you're caught, and you're an IUSB student, you'll be fined, you may lose your network privileges, you may be given the opportunity to settle with the industry prior to being sued (they'll ask you for at least $3,000) or you may be taken to court with a possibility of being bankrupted by a multi-thousand-dollar award. I doubt McCollough can afford to pay your pre-settlement costs, your lawyer fees or the judgment if one is rendered against you in court. I'll bet he won't even reimburse you for the $50 that will be tacked on to your bursar account beginning Jan. 2 if we receive a notification that you've engaged in illegal file sharing. It's true, artists do want you to enjoy their work and if they want to give it to you for free, that's great. However, if you take it from them, copy it and share it without their permission, that's illegal. The artists aren't compensated and you may end up paying a lot more for that "free" tune or movie than if you'd just gone to the store and bought it. Pat Ames is vice chancellor for information technologies at Indiana University South Bend.